For a company that emphasizes their workflow, did they ever talk about DSD/Digital in the middle? If not, then that is clearly wrong. And they knew it to boot. I mean who doesn't know in their field that LP lovers like their analog workflow?
I am sure the first time they thought to digitize the content they had to pause and think about this.
They've always favored Trademarked Terms(TM) without any real specifics to describe their processes, more than actual facts, and have since the beginning. It's dumb, which is why it's always been smarter to ignore that and actually listen to the masterings, or simply ignore MoFi.
Both of which are smarter than making demonstrably silly assumptions about nonsense and then getting upset when you find out the record you bought and thought was great
is still great, but you were wrong about why.
Nobody's records sound worse today than they did yesterday. MoFI's been taking flat DSD transfers of master tapes for at least a decade. If you as consumer "got cheated", what did you
get cheated out of, exactly?
I mean who doesn't know in their field that LP lovers like their analog workflow?
I would argue that "cutting vinyl directly from the master tapes with no digital steps" as a marketing blurb is a much newer phenomenon than MoFi, or any of MoFi's advertising or Trademarked Processes(TM). Hell, the last time they updated their ad copy was
before the most recent vinyl resurgence. And they've always focused their processes on cutting lacquers, pressing vinyl with minimal generational loss, etc - the vinyl manufacturing process itself. I strongly suspect the market has changed around them, and now demands things that 10 years ago virtually no one cared about.
I am sure the first time they thought to digitize the content they had to pause and think about this.
Undoubtedly, and the engineers that started doing this roughly a decade (or more) ago clearly correctly recognized that a flat capture to DSD256 would "extract and capture all the musical information on the original master tape" - a claim MoFi has always made about their process for both vinyl and SACD. They thought about it, and recognized it would be a wonderfully convenient and provably transparent step, which it is. This is why the engineers were like "yeah sure we do that" when it was brought up with them. They didn't even see it as a thing to hide because 1. it
doesn't matter, they're right 2. see previous comment about the market changing around them.
I don't think this is malice as much as it is "we've always done it this way" on MoFi's side+people making assumptions and not really paying attention as the AAA vinyl "cut off of the master tapes in the same room" fad picked up steam post-vinyl-resurgence in recent years.
They've now updated their ad copy with more detail, everyone's records still sound the same, no one has lost
anything - that's a win win.